Op-Ed: Business and Human Rights Debate Finally on the Right Track

by Mary Robinson and Sir Mark Moody-Stuart

Today marks the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Good progress has
been made in entrenching a culture of human rights around the world over the past six decades. Yet
discrimination, oppression, poverty and injustice remain all too prevalent. What should this
anniversary mean for business? Where do we stand on the sometimes controversial subject of
business and human rights?

The good news is that over the past decade more and more companies have positively engaged to
find the right response to a range of hard issues – from operations in countries experiencing
violent conflict to addressing the concerns of local communities that believe business activities
may undermine the exercise of their rights. This doesn’t mean they have found all the answers or
that the majority of companies are conversant on the links between human rights and their
operations, but there has been a marked trend towards greater business engagement around the human
rights agenda.

Governments working with the UN system have also taken important steps forward. In 2005, the UN
Secretary-General appointed John Ruggie of Harvard University as a Special Representative to move
beyond the contentious debates of the past around the draft UN Norms and to make progress on
defining a framework to reinforce the obligations of governments and more clearly determine the
role of business and other actors in relation to human rights.

In his third report to the UN Human Rights Council, submitted earlier this year, Professor
Ruggie put forward a new policy framework for business and human rights that comprises three core
principles: governments’ duty to protect human rights, including from abuses by third parties,
including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and the need for greater
access by victims to effective remedies. This approach has been endorsed by major international
business associations and leading international human rights organizations alike. Thanks to these
efforts, we are today seeing an emerging consensus on how to advance the business and human rights
agenda in the years ahead.

As a reassuring affirmation of this consensus, chief executives from around the world have today
issued a call to action for governments and business alike to renew their commitment to the
protection of human rights in the spirit of the Universal Declaration. Organized by the United
Nations Global Compact and already signed by nearly 250 business leaders from 68 countries, the CEO
Statement is far more than an expression of goodwill and aspiration. It illustrates the growing
awareness that business has a responsibility to respect human rights and is an increasingly
important actor in development and the provision of public goods in many countries – with
significant consequences for the lives of individuals and communities, for better or
worse.

While many challenges remain, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. Perhaps more than
ever before, business leaders around the world have come to understand that the protection of
universal human rights, beyond its moral imperative, should also make good business sense. Ensuring
decent and safe workplace conditions, promoting non-discrimination and diversity in employment,
respecting and safeguarding the rights of local communities – these have become material issues to
the long-term sustainability of business. Managing human rights in a proactive manner means
managing legal and reputational risks, meeting shareholder and stakeholder expectations and
maintaining and motivating staff performance. It also involves companies in having a better
rounded appreciation of their impacts – positive and negative; direct and indirect – on the world
around them.

At the same time, determined efforts are still needed to develop greater clarity on what the
basic responsibility to respect human rights entails for business, and what steps companies need to
take to ensure that they are living up to society’s expectations. Even the most committed managers
say they need more practical and authoritative guidance on what human rights mean for businesses
and how these issues can best be reflected within their day-to-day operations. Equally
important, there has been too little recognition of the catalytic role played by companies in
reducing poverty or in expanding access to basic services such as education, healthcare or safe
drinking water and sanitation and too little emphasis on the need for governments to ensure that
they fulfill their obligations to make such services accessible and affordable for all.

Thankfully, there are many ways in which businesses can engage – in collaboration with others or
individually – to give practical meaning to the Universal Declaration. For one, the UN Global
Compact, with its more than 5,000 participating companies in 132 countries, offers a formidable
platform of engagement, dialogue and learning that can help companies develop and implement
appropriate and effective polices to advance human rights. Companies can also get involved in
a growing number of projects to advance their understanding of human rights like the one the Global
Compact is supporting with the Global Reporting Initiative and Realizing Rights to assist companies
committed to including human rights relevant issues as part of their annual sustainability
reports.

Undoubtedly, much has changed in the way we look at the role of business as an actor in the
ongoing work to ensure respect for human rights. Despite the current economic crisis, a growing
number of business leaders understand that human rights issues are of direct relevance to their
long term success. Many challenges remain, but as the Universal Declaration enters its seventh
decade, we have perhaps moved a bit closer to the holistic vision expressed in its preamble: to
realize "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations".

Mary Robinson is the President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative and a
former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.